For those who like to keep an eye on the bigger global picture, beyond the local masturbatory antics of the ANC in its slide towards fascism, this week sees a couple of large scale events about to unfold, which aren’t being focused on much but, in the words of those early morning TV people, will most likely provide good “spectator value”.
There’s a ferociously big hurricane heading towards the shores of the continental US which is almost certain to cause serious havoc and deaths. There’s also fissionable nuclear material about to be dropped onto a planet, (which hopefully won’t ignite that planet’s atmosphere, turning it into a new sun and killing us all around 13 weeks later). The latter probably won’t happen, but if it does, you read it first here, as if that’s any consolation.
Firstly, just to show you your first look at a Category Five hurricane making its way towards the USA, go take a look at the realtime storm-tracking map for Hurricane Isobel. Currently its winds are blowing at around 160 miles per hour, and its going to hit the US round about the 18th of September (Thursday this week). Here’s a look at the projected path, showing where the destruction zone is likely to be: The Hurricane Path.
Then just to freak you out (and do show this picture to Christians to scare them) take a look at this official NASA picture of the hurricane showing a pentagram shape formed at the storm’s center: Hurricane Isabel Pentagram. And if you’re a fan of large-scale destruction, bookmark and keep an eye on the info, alerts and satellite pics at Hurricane Centre.
Now, here’s a question to ask anyone interested (or studying) physics: “Theoretically, what would happen to a lake of dense liquid hydrogen and helium if a fission bomb were detonated inside it, assuming no other significant elements were present above, below, or in the lake?”
Because this is going to happen on the 21st of September, when NASA will be smashing the Galileo spacecraft into Jupiter at speeds of around 48 km per second. (Approximately 107 000 miles per hour). Officially there’s little chance of a nuclear reaction occurring, however for a lengthy examination of the nuclear materials onboard Galileo, as well as a look at the atmosphere of Jupiter, look at Jupiter Impact.
And here’s the official NASA page: Countdown to Jupiter Impact. Then here’s a report from February, detailing the imminent end of Galileo, after 13 years of space travel: Galileo Winds Down. (Worst case scenario is that at 2.58PM EDT, Jupiter’s atmosphere ignites and at 3.50PM EDT, we’ll see it from Earth. (The speed of light lag accounts for this delay). Then, around 13 weeks later, Earth’ll be on the receiving end of around 900 trillion pounds of Jupiter’s hydrogen and helium, travelling at 100km per second. An extinction event, in other words. Cool, no more worries about global hunger.) The big boom scenario isn’t really likely, but it’s suspicious and nasty that NASA is taking the time to dump radioactive material onto other planets. We humans suck, don’t we?
Gear change. Cartoons! Lots of editorial cartoons to browse through, courtesy of the pen and skill of the Seattle-Post Intelligencer‘s David Horsey. Go checkout his online 1999 Archive.
Remember ‘records’? It may seem an odd question, but understand that there’s an entire generation of kids growing up today who’ve probably never seen a ‘record’ or LP, having emerged into the world when CDs and digital data are the norm. Yup, gone are the days of carefully putting a twenty cent piece on top of the stylus to prevent the needle skipping as you played your records. Go browse through a Dutch 78 rpm fan online with lots of his ancient records encoded for listening. Go to Jan’s 78rpm Record Warehouse.
And speaking of old stuff, “What evil lurks in the hearts of men” went the tagline for an old radio show called The Shadow. Turn your PC into a radio and download an episode or two at The Shadow.
Then more oldish stuff. Take a look at a collection of old adverts found on buildings, which one sharp eyed person realised needed to be preserved as part history-part art: Fading Adverts.
For those of you slaves stuck in offices, being treated like children and furtively reading this column when the boss isn’t looking, take note of this next site which has vast quantities of useful excuses to get you off work. Go find the excuse that fools your boss at The Mother Of All Excuses Page.
And continuing in the ‘wasting time at work’ vein, no matter what your problem is at work, you’re likely to find other disgruntled workers discussing it at P45.
Now I’m probably going to get killed for this next site, but it made me laugh out loud — no mean feat in this day and age. Take one online ‘dialectizer’ bot that warps webpages, and choose whether you want your target page created in pig-Latin, moron, redneck or other dialect. As an example, I took the ANC’s official page, and turned it into Moron-Speak. Oddly enough, the ANC page reads better in Redneck.
Head to the official Dialectizer Page and ruin some webmasters day.
Thinking of the ANC and local ugly politicians led me to a couple of pages. Firstly, there’s some fun Darwin Award-type material to be found in the many pages inside Duh The World of the Stupid. And next, and perhaps more relevant to the local scene, proof that the human gene pool needs a lot of chlorine, be very very very afraid as you browse the pictures in the galleries at Fugly: . Before you run for cover, take a look at a fake site which mocks the genre of bad webpages and even uglier photographs of their makers. Stare in horror at the pix at Welcome To My TrailerPark Page.
For those of you intelligent enough to ignore all advertising, go have a look at a site which provides a decent take on the economic propaganda which bombards society on an ongoing basis. Bad Ads. And to see how subtle the advertising has become these days, take a step back into history and browse through the often amazingly interesting Peculiar Adverts.
In 1839, Edgar Allan Poe, writer and crypto fan, published a cryptographic challenge in a magazine series. He took on and solved about 100 cryptographs sent in by readers. In 1840, a Mr. W. B. Tayler sent Poe a pair of cryptographs for which Poe never published a solution. The Challenge.
The code was finally broken in 1992: Cracking the Cryptograph.
Given the prices of books these days, its something of an expensive exercise to take a chance on buying titles you’re not sure about. Rather than take the advice of co-opted talk show hosts who’ve been given free books in exchange for talking about them, do some spadework on your own. Try this fun site which categorizes and reviews books in a fairly high tech way. Go browse at Which Book. Another useful site for sniffing out goodies, is Book Page.
Until the next time, if hurricanes or politicians don’t get me.